Plane crash-lands on Myanmar road, killing three

A plane carrying 63 people, most of them Christmas tourists, crash-landed on a road in central Myanmar, leaving three dead and eleven injured.

Air Bagan issued a statement saying 51 of the passengers were foreigners but that all the fatalities were Myanmar citizens. The dead were a tour guide, an 11-year-old child on board the plane and a man riding a motorcycle on the road where it came down. The injured include two Americans, a British national and a Korean.

The plane had been flying from Mandelay to Heho airport, the gateway to Inle Lake, a popular tourist destination, according to the statement which the airline posted on its Facebook page.

There appear to be differing accounts of the accident from the airline and local officials. Air Bagan describes the incident as an “emergency landing” but authorities say bad weather led the pilot to mistake the road for a runway.